Randomly selected students in the Academic Health Sciences Divisions and Psychology Department at ETSU participated in a two-year Interprofessional Education (IPE) program. Prior research found that student’s general attitudes and perceptions of team oriented collaborative practice positively change with IPE experiences. However, there is a lack of research supporting that IPE improves students’ specific skills and competencies. The goal of ETSU’s pilot IPE program was to provide a collaborative learning environment for students from health professions to improve future health outcomes. Students participated in an IPE activity or course for each of the four Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice. The competencies included Roles and Responsibilities, Ethics, Communication, and Teams and Teamwork, which provide a framework for lifelong learning across all health professions’ education curricula. The purpose of the research was to determine whether participation in IPE activities and courses changed students’ specific skills and competencies within the broader four Core Competencies. It was predicted that integrating interprofessional education into post-secondary education would increase students’ knowledge and application and appreciation of interprofessional education. Data was collected through the online survey program, Survey Monkey©, before and after each course or activity. Pre- and post-surveys were administered to measure students’ judgments about their current level of knowledge, ability to implement the knowledge, and degree to which they valued the skills. Nine to twelve subcompetencies, derived from the Core Competencies, were presented in a question format addressing the proficiencies: I know..., I practice..., and I value... A total of 32 graduate students from the Colleges of Medicine, College of Nursing, College of Pharmacy, College of Public Health, College of Clinical and Rehabilitative Health Sciences, and Department of Psychology submitted 41 surveys. Dependent t-tests were used to test for change between pre- and post-test ratings. Results showed that the overall mean posttest ratings within each Core Competency were greater than the pre-test ratings at a statistically significant levels, excluding the Ethics Competency. The mean post-test ratings for each proficiency (e.g., I know, I practice, I value) were greater than the pre-test ratings at a statistically significant levels. Most students (95%) rated their initial evaluation of knowledge as accurate, meaning the students felt their pre-test ratings were representative of their prior knowledge. The findings of the current study suggest that integrating interprofessional education into post-secondary education courses, such as that provided by the ETSU IPE Pilot Project, may increase students’ knowledge, skills and appreciation for interprofessional education.

Speech-language pathologists are challenged with providing children with treatment that results in the greatest amount of improvement in the least amount of time. To aid in this challenge, we examined how quickly and efficaciously seven children with a specific language impairment (SLI) learned verbs compared to seven children with typical language (TL) development. Each child was taught the meaning and use of six nonsense verbs. Nonsense verbs were used to ensure that the target verbs had never been heard by any of the participants before the experiment and allowed us to control verb exposure. Each participant received up to four training sessions of 30-minutes each. During these sessions, the examiner utilized naturalistic conversational techniques and play activities with carefully selected sets of toys that corresponded to the meaning of the target words. The training sessions were ended when children demonstrated 100% accuracy in their understanding of the verbs and 50% accuracy in their production during a probe task. All sessions were audio-recorded and the experimenters and childs utterances were reliably coded. Analysis revealed that the two groups received the same input from the experimenter in terms of the number and type of exposures to the verbs. We examined the childrens nonsense verb productions for their rate and quality. Rate of verb acquisition was measured by counting: 1) the number of sessions required before the criteria for learning was met; 2) the number of exposures before childs first spontaneous production of each target verb; and 3) the number of exposures before childs first elicited production of each target verb. Quality of verb acquisition was measured by counting: 1) the number of alternative real verbs substituted for a nonsense verb and 2) the accuracy of transitive target verb usage. Although the results were not statistically significant for any of the measures tested, there was a trend for children with SLI to learn the target nonsense verbs more slowly but just as

No description available.

In this study 538 children composed 1 oral and 1 written fictional story in both 2nd and 4th grades. Each child represented 1 of 4 diagnostic groups: typical language (TL), specific language impairment (SLI), nonspecific language impairment (NLI), or low nonverbal IQ (LNIQ). The stories of the TL group had more different words, more grammatical complexity, fewer errors, and more overall quality than either language-impaired group at either grade. Stories of the SLI and LNIQ groups were consistently stronger than were those of the NLI group. Kindergarten children with language impairment (LI) whose standardized test performance suggested normalization by 2nd grade also appeared to have recovered in storytelling abilities at that point. By 4th grade, however, these children's stories were less like the children with TL and more like those of children with persistent LI than they had been in 2nd grade. Oral stories were better than written stories in both grades, although the greatest gains from 2nd to 4th grade were generally made on written stories. Girls told stronger stories than did boys at both grades, regardless of group placement. It is concluded that story composition tasks are educationally relevant and should play a significant role in the evaluation of children with developmental LI.

Clinicians have a wide-variety of therapy materials, activities, techniques, and procedures available for treatment of children with morphosyntax deficits. This clinically-focused article describes strategies that highlight the critical features of morphosyntactic targets, reviews, techniques, and procedures available to clinicians for their mindful use, and advocates for the addition of distributed learning in daily contexts by involving caregivers in language facilitation. It concludes with a proposal for a holistic approach that encompasses three levels of language intervention. At the first level, the clinician overtly primes the child's system; at the second level, the clinician sets up multiple opportunities to use the target in context; at the third level, the clinician engages caregivers as agents of intervention for distributed learning and sends the child out into a language-facilitating environment.

Surveys measured students’ knowledge, application, and appreciation for four core competencies of IPE before and after their participation in specific activities and courses. There was a statistically significant difference between pre- and post-test ratings for all competencies, with the exception of Ethics, and all proficiency types. Modest gains were found.

No description available.

At any given time, 3-9% of the general population experiences a voice problem. The incidence of voice disorders in children can vary anywhere between 6 and 23%, yet, only 2-4% of the population are seen by speech-language pathologists for further assessment and treatment. Voice disorders have negative effects on the social, emotional, and physical functioning of the child. Unfortunately, there is little known about the appropriate management of children with voice disorders. Depending on the nature of the voice disorder, different approaches, including behavioral voice therapy, vocal hygiene management, or medical intervention, are available. However, a concern with behavioral voice therapy is the ability of the child to transfer skills learned in clinic to an outside setting - limiting generalization and adaptation of the new behavioral approach. Biofeedback has been successfully used in adults with voice disorders to help generalize new vocal behaviors. Such data is lacking in the treatment of voice problems in the pediatric population. The current case study aimed to understand the use of biofeedback in an eight-year-old male who was diagnosed with a unilateral vocal fold lesion, who exhibited difficulty maintaining and generalizing his new vocal behaviors. It was hypothesized that the child would benefit from biofeedback and would maintain new vocal behaviors including the use of a safe and efficient voice pattern outside the clinic setting. Longitudinal data on vocal parameters including the pitch, loudness, and vocal fold vibration were obtained over a period of five weeks using an ambulation phonation monitor (APM). The APM uses an accelerometer attached to the sternal notch and measures pitch, loudness, and vocal fold vibration, which helps determine an individual’s daily voice use pattern and thereby determines the appropriate biofeedback setting. The five week period included (a) a week of pretesting, (b) two weeks of biofeedback, (c) a week of post-testing immediately following the week of biofeedback, and (d) a generalization testing two months post-study. During the five-week period, vocal parameters were monitored for an average of 7- 10 hours for 2-3 days each week. On weeks two and three, the child was provided with biofeedback on loudness levels based on his data from the pretesting week. Results indicated change in vocal parameters including loudness and vocal fold vibration patterns during the weeks of biofeedback. However, such generalization was not observed neither during immediate post feedback monitoring nor two months following the study protocol. Such data provide immediate effects from biofeedback on vocal behavior, however, motor learning principles, dose, and frequency of biofeedback will be discussed to further understand the long-term effects of biofeedback in children with voice problems.

No description available.

Vocal fatigue is among the most debilitating conditions affecting individuals with voice disorders, with little known about its actual metabolic mechanisms. The current study aims to address this issue by investigating the hypothesis that neuromuscular inefficiency, cardiovascular recovery deficits, or both, may play a role in vocal fatigue.